do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

DAVID STOCKHOFF · 24 May 2011, 17:02 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (DAVID STOCKHOFF)
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 10:02:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
In-Reply-To: <A6EA089BDF394608A56239876CADE572@jill>
Message-ID: <205634.91170.qm at web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>



--- On Tue, 5/24/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

> From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
> Subject: Re: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011, 10:29 AM
> 
> From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> >Gerry Quinn:
> 
> 
> As I wrote the above, another example of embellishment with
> ideas of the time occured to me: it is in the section where
> the wolves in their burrow defend Frog from the
> smilodon.? The animals are spoken of as carrying
> weapons such as knives.? There is of course a strong
> echo here of the idea of bees with swords, which was the
> concept of bees held by the people immured for generations
> in the Antechamber.? Perhaps Wolfe is suggesting that
> the tales were transmitted via some antechamber folk who
> found their way out.? Or perhaps these embellishments
> were added at a time when Urth was a megapolis with few
> animals.? We don't know, and we don't really need to
> know.? The point is the structure, not the
> embellishments per se.

The Antechamber always made me think vaguely of Plato's Cave, the way its inhabitants sit telling stories from a world they have never seen and know nothing of except from those stories. One one hand, this is much like mortals trying to figure out the nature of a Divine Being they can't see; on the other, their stories achieve a sort of perfection without the correction that knowledge of the real world would provide. Both ideas are pretty central to Wolfe's approach to myth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Unfortunately I cannot get to the text right now. Am I
> right in remembering the sowing of teeth or
> > stones to grow soldiers in Tale of Boy Called Frog? If
> so the story also invokes Cadmus, the
> > founder of Thebes and that royal house. As brother to
> Europa and grandfather to Dionysus, the
> > mythological inclusion of Cadmus might be fruitful in
> fleshing out more of the Sun Series backstory.
> 
> No - he raised an army composed of ordinary men plus
> wolves.

Are you sure? I also was reminded of the Jason story.

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